Pooja Khanna and Pankaj Chaddah

Mental health has come to the forefront with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. While numerous players are offering solutions in conjunction with broader healthcare programmes, “there is a very clear need for a more singular, dedicated approach to mental wellness, which is what Mindhouse is focused on,” says Zomato co-founder Pankaj Chaddah.

Recently, Chaddah teamed up with ex-Zomato chief of staff Pooja Khanna to unveil their new venture —Mindhouse; a mental wellness service that offers a variety of guided meditation sessions and techniques. The classes are led by a team of instructors, and conducted in a modern, interactive format on the Mindhouse app. It also offers yoga classes, delivered in the same format, as well as proprietary pre-recorded audio and video content. With children and older people part of the target customer segment, the Mindhouse team expects 70-90 million urban Indians to include meditation in their wellness routine, resulting in consumer spending on meditation surge to an annual $10 billion in the country in the next few years.

The Mindhouse app provides meditation and yoga content in the form of live classes and a vast library of modules that can be consumed anytime by the user. Built for beginners and advanced meditators alike, the app recommends content based on the user’s selected goals such as sleep, patience, focus, relaxed mind and relaxed body, and their past experience in meditation. The app is available on Android and iOS.

Says Pooja Khanna, “Online and offline channels will both help fuel this growth. The penetration of meditation in countries such as the US is now at the same level as that of yoga, and India will get there very quickly.” The team, with its global experience behind them, also has an eye on the international market.

With a strong focus on professionals, Mindhouse has worked with more than 500 companies during the lockdown. It had launched its services in December 2019 with offline meditation studios. Within the first few days of the lockdown, it made a quick shift to the online model and accelerated efforts to scale up the digital business model.